SANTA MONICA, CA – Jeffrey Tanenhaus, bike commuter turned bike tourist has ridden a NYC bike share bike across the US and will end his cross country tour at the Santa Monica Pier on Saturday, January 23rd. While a 45 lb. public bike share bike would not be most people's first choice for a long-distance bike ride, Jeffrey decided to ride the bike that had given him so much joy commuting to work and for his daily errands in New York City — promoting the versatility and benefits of healthy, active transportation and contributing to a less congested and more vibrant city.

Much of Jeffrey’s trip, which he calls Countri Bike has been along Route 66. Local advocacy group Santa Monica Spoke is planning to welcome Jeffrey to the West Coast with a ride along the last leg of his journey on City of Santa Monica’s own recently launched public bike share system Breeze, presented by Hulu. Together, with bike share advocates, we will ride with Jeffrey from Colorado Center Park to the Santa Monica Pier, departing at 2:45 pm. There we will celebrate the end his journey with a fun finish line ribbon cutting at the iconic end of Route 66 atop of the Santa Monica Pier, at 3 pm.

Santa Monica has been a proud leader in the Southern California region, launching Los Angeles County’s first public bike share system on November 12, 2015. We are thrilled residents and visitors alike are embracing Breeze Bike Share as an easy way to get around town. Since launching, over 6,150 active members have joined the City of Santa Monica owned 500-bike system, completing 24,800 trips. In total, members have traveled 55,667 miles, about the equivalent of nine round trips from Santa Monica to New York City, logging over 495 days of ride time. Breeze has kept an estimated 54,300 lbs. of carbon from entering the atmosphere, and riders have burned an estimated 2,434,160 calories.

As Breeze Bike Share continues to grow in popularity, it will help our city reduce car trips, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and improve mobility for Santa Monica residents, employees, and visitors. Since the beginning Santa Monica Spoke has supported bike share as a healthy, active alternative to car trips and an important component in the City’s overall strategy to offer the community sustainable alternatives that help reduce car trips that contribute to vehicle congestion and greenhouse gas emissions. We are excited and encouraged to see so many Breeze bike riders replacing their short car trips and commutes with bike trips. The community can now easily access public bike share as one more option to single car trips and will soon be an ideal way to access Expo Light Rail when it arrives in spring of 2016.

In the coming months the City of Santa Monica and Breeze Bike Share will be working to fine-tune the bike share system to maximize it’s operational efficiency, customer usefulness, and safety for all users and bystanders. To that end, Santa Monica Spoke in collaboration with the City of Santa Monica and support from the operator CycleHop, LLC has begun a series of classes that will be offered monthly to help educate the community on how to use Breeze, Rules of the Road and basic bike riding safety tips.

ABOUT SANTA MONICA SPOKESanta Monica Spoke is the local advocacy group supporting biking, walking and health active transportation alternatives. We are a community based nonprofit working to make Santa Monica more sustainable, and a better place to live, walk, bike, work and play.

Advocating the implementation of Complete Streets Policies that support and protect all users and the use of public transportation to promote fewer single car trips fora healthier, safer, more sustainable environment for our community. Find out more about our momentum for change at SMSpoke.org.

ABOUT BREEZE BIKESHAREBreeze Bike Share, owned by the City of Santa Monica, operated by CycleHop, LLC, and presented by Hulu, provides 500 public bicycles at 75 stations throughout the city. Breeze bicycles offer flexibility for one-way bike rides to get around town in a fun, healthy and environmentally-friendly way and achieve the Santa Monica community’s goals to reduce car trips and GHG emissions. Payment options include “pay-as-you-go” at 10¢ per minute, and monthly or annual membership rates that offer huge savings and are discounted for City of Santa Monica residents. Register at www.breezebikeshare.com or through the Social Bicycles app for IOS and Android.